Global Pulse has a clear vision and an ambitious mission

our missionHarness innovation to protect the vulnerable

our visionClose the information gap between the onset of a crisis and the availability of actionable information for decision makers

The Information Gap

When the global economic crisis hit in 2008, world leaders needed to know how the crisis was affecting vulnerable populations.

That turned out to be a bit of a problem.

Household-level stats take months to collect, and years to validate!

The information gap is real…

?

First data becomes available

…as are its consequences.

Yet during the global crisis, the world also changed in truly wondrous ways

Data

Open and Generated Data

lOpen DatalPopulation-generated datalSMS surveyslGov2.0 apps

UN and Government Data

-UN open data http://data.un.org/-License agreements-Data cleaning & normalisation-Individual privacy-Data Sovereignty

Private and Donated Data

-Data held by private companiesData PhilanthropyPrivacy protection-Intellectual property

-Looking for 'markers'

Real-time “data exhaust”

“the incidental, or ambient data that is created as a by-product of simply carrying on with our daily lives”

•Social Media•Citizen Reporting•Online News•Mobile Phone Services•Remote Sensing

The data is out there…

Issues: first do no harm

• Data security

• Individual privacy

• Data sovereignty

• Intellectual property

• Information content

• Trust

Global Pulse Products:

Real-time monitoring framework

Open platform architecture

Local innovation labs

Analysis & Visualisation

Collaborative analysis

lHunch labslArgumentation methods

Big Data methods

-Real-time streaming data-Very large datasets

Traditional methods

-Frequentist statistics-Bayesian statistics

Test case: food insecurity (2008, 2011)

Technologies

Open standards, open APIs, open source components

Collaborate with your team, share hunches with your social network and tracking tools

Integrate with existing tools for data aggregation, analysis, visualization, mapping, alerting…

Innovation labs

Detect when vulnerable populations are being impacted by global shocks,

Understand the coping strategies – both positive and negative – that affected communities are adopting,

Share hypotheses, alerts and key information with regional partners,

Respond with better policy interventions sooner than possible today.